


Folly

by rhodrymavelyne



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:02:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27231673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhodrymavelyne/pseuds/rhodrymavelyne
Summary: To want Will still is folly, but it’s a folly Hannibal finds he still cannot resist, especially when he sees Will again at the Norman Chapel.
Relationships: Anthony Dimmond/Hannibal Lecter, Bedelia Du Maurier/Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Folly

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place during Primavera referencing moments in Antipasto. I love so many episodes on Hannibal but if I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be Primavera. :) I don’t own Hannibal but for months it has owned me.

The moment when Antony Dimmond first looked at me lingered within my memories, a snapshot moment within my new life on the run. 

How bold this young man had been in his appraisal of me. There was no shy dance of glances, avoiding his, no skittish behavior. And that was fine. I’d escaped the mystery of that fatal intimacy for a gilded facade of elegance. I put on the people suit known as Dr. Fell as easily as I’d worn my identity of Dr. Hannibal Lecter. After all I’ve always worn a mask, a veil, a people suit. Once more I became part of a well-groomed crowd, one I could glide through with a measure of elegance, more than I’d been able to wallow in while living in Baltimore. 

Why did it all feel so empty, so hollow? 

Later I would look back on that moment while riding on a train, Antony’s bloody remains wrapped within a traveling box, preserved for a romantic gesture. I’d sift through the snapshot along with other memories of the past, Abel Gideon’s taunts echoing within them. 

This is what you’ve done to me, Will. You’ve addicted me to the natural intimacy of our bond. Nothing else seems real anyone. No one holds my attention for long. I drift from academia to dinner party, not truly engaged in anything, even things which once absorbed me completely. Bedelia acts as my anchor but she’s not enough. Not even her company is enough. 

No, I am still fool enough to want you back, even as I marvel at my own folly. Or is it really folly? Perhaps the true folly was to leave you and Abigail bleeding on the floor. I should have killed you both. I should have picked you up, shoved you both in a trunk, and carried you off with me as if impossible as that might have been.

Does it haunt you, Will, that night in the kitchen, the night when I lost both Abigail and you? The night I tried to raze the earth, thinking I could leave it behind? Do you ache with longing? Is your life as hollow as mine?

Why else would you come to the Norman Chapel if you didn’t have a little of the same hunger that I feel for you?

I caught your scent before I caught sight of you, breathing in the familar fevered wildness. You always taste like you’ve bathed in some sort of magical poison, lathered yourself with juice from the poisoned apple which induces enchanted slumber, a juice which seeped through your skin and is working its way through your brain.

I looked up and caught sight of your slender silhouette moving at your own steady deliberate pace, not allowing the hasty patter of others’s footsteps to hurry your purpose. I saw your tousled dark head, similar to so many other young men in jackets I’ve seen walking by in Florence and Palermo, but this time there’s no mistake. This time it’s you.  


I felt my chest constrict, squeezing my heart in a vise-like grip, filling my entire body with an almost painful excitement. 

Such madness. I’d been in a grip of similar madness when I stole the candles intended for a wedding and a funeral in this very chapel. Both were canceled on account of my valentine for you. I lit each wax sentry in a hollow waiting in the catacombs beneath the chapel, making the maze within blaze with light. All of this was part of my preparations for a more private, intimate ceremony with you. 

Only that ceremony never happened. I backed away like Mary Magdalen in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical at the sound of your voice. 

You called me by my first name for the first time, Will. You’ve never done that to my face before, even though you’ve used it with Alana, Jack, even Frederick. Never with me. For the first time you offered me that little extra taste of intimacy, of acknowledging the intimacy between us. This was right before you forgave me. 

After watching you through windows like a hungry, desperate vampire, frightening the good parishoners of Palermo into festooning their homes with garlic, I backed away. Such folly. The poor, frightened sheep are now too terrified to go to church. There was never any need for them to fear me. Not here. Not now. I am only interested in one tasty, black lamb and you have never been part of the flock, not really. You were Jack’s pet and mine, yet you somehow slip through our grasp constantly, taking us by surprise.

I let you slip away, Will, yet again, for what else is there? What matters more than you?

There will be a reckoning for us one day, Will, but not yet. Neither of us are ready. 

For now all we can do is cope with our folly.

**Author's Note:**

> Hannibal's thoughts about razing the earth are a reference to Bryan's Fuller's own commentary during Mizumono.


End file.
